Expert Tasters from Japan, Australia, U.S. Chosen to Lead 5th NYIOOC

Miciyo Yamada from Japan, Lina Smith from the United States and Robert Harris from Australia will lead this year's panel.

2017 NYIOOC Panel Leader Lina Smith
By Olive Oil Times Staff
Mar. 9, 2017 15:25 UTC
93
2017 NYIOOC Panel Leader Lina Smith

The New York International Olive Oil Competition (NYIOOC) has announced the appoint­ments of the three panel lead­ers for the fifth edi­tion of the world’s largest and most pres­ti­gious olive oil com­pe­ti­tion.

Unlike other com­pe­ti­tions where there is one panel leader, or head judge, the NYIOOC each year appoints three judges from dif­fer­ent coun­tries to lead the inter­na­tional team of experts that make up the elite judg­ing panel.

The panel lead­ers for the 2017 NYIOOC are Miciyo Yamada from Japan, Lina Smith from the United States and Robert Harris from Australia.

Top experts in their fields who exem­plify the excel­lence of the NYIOOC panel.- Curtis Cord, NYIOOC President

NYIOOC pres­i­dent Curtis Cord called the three panel lead­ers top experts in their fields who exem­plify the excel­lence of the NYIOOC panel — the lead­ing olive oil tasters in the world.”




Miciyo Yamada is the first (and, so far, only) Japanese who passed the Italian Olive Oil Taster exam­i­na­tion orga­nized by the Italian Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry Policies. She is a panel mem­ber of AIPO (Associazione Interregionale Produttori Olivicoli) and the Laboratory of DISTAL (Departimento Scienze e Technologia Agro Alimentari) in Italy, and of JOOP (Japan Olive Oil Prize) orga­nized by the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Japan.

Miciyo Yamada

Lina Smith is a Boston-based olive oil edu­ca­tor and con­sul­tant. She began her career as a chem­i­cal engi­neer, then seek­ing a way to incor­po­rate her love of the Mediterranean into daily life, pur­sued a Master of Arts degree in Italian at Middllebury College in Florence. In Tuscany, she wrote her Master’s the­sis on olive oil and learned to taste pro­fes­sion­ally under the late vision­ary, Marco Mugelli.

Lina Smith

Smith leads edu­ca­tional events in Boston and has taught for Slow Food, Harvard Food Literacy Project and CCAE in Cambridge. She is the founder of the Boston Olive Oil Club, an edu­ca­tional orga­ni­za­tion that teaches the pub­lic to under­stand and rec­og­nize qual­ity olive oil.

Robert Harris is an Australian expert in the sen­sory eval­u­a­tion of olive oils and a fre­quent judge in regional and inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tions includ­ing the Australian Olive Association National Extra Virgin Olive Oil Shows and the Royal Melbourne Fine Food Awards.

Robert Harris

The panel lead­ers are among the fif­teen dis­tin­guished experts who will eval­u­ate over 800 olive oils from 27 coun­tries next month, ulti­mately deter­min­ing the best olive oils in the world for 2017.

The win­ning olive oils are cov­eted by chefs, food buy­ers and dis­cern­ing con­sumers who value extra vir­gin olive oils of the high­est qual­ity. The results are pre­sented on the web­site bestoliveoils.org and syn­di­cated world­wide.

The New York International Olive Oil Competition is pro­duced by Olive Oil Times, an inde­pen­dent pub­li­ca­tion unaf­fil­i­ated with any olive oil brand.



Advertisement
Advertisement

Related Articles